Working Outside, Enjoying Your Own Company, Staying True to Your Passions, etc.
In which maybe hotdog will make you feel better?
🌭 ‘Maybe Hot Dog Will Make Wife Feel Better,’ Thinks Husband No Closer To Fixing Things. “Hot dog tastes good, and wife likes things that taste good.”
🏀 Big day in my neck of the woods.
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🎧 An album I love every week, in no particular order, figuring by year’s end I’ll have what would constitute my top 50.
(8/50) Belle & Sebastian, If You’re Feeling Sinister: A timeless chamber pop record, Stuart Murdoch’s conspiratorial vocals tell stories of tragicomic dreamers, misfits and lost souls. Its songs of isolation, identity, and quiet rebellion still feels like secrets being whispered just for me.
🏟️ The first album I wrote about this year was by The Beta Band, whose reunion tour after a twenty year absence I am assuming I personally willed into existence.
🤵♂️ An Esquire profile on Seth Rogan, co-creator and star of upcoming AppleTV+ Hollywood-satire The Studio. Rogen also talks about his company Houseplant, which blends premium cannabis with stylish home goods and how he has managed to stay true to his creative and entrepreneurial passions for over 25 years. “He’s got this deep, deep, deep love for the process, and respect for it.”
🧤 “I started to wonder if the well-being I feel being outside more in the summer could also be available in the winter, when I often feel a pervasive, faceless melancholy that is hard to put my finger on. I decided to find out by working outside for part of every weekday starting in late December.” I know it’s almost spring, but this piece on working outdoors in the cold is still worth the read. If you work remotely, consider the improved mood, increased energy, and stronger connection to nature.
🧘 Filmmaker Andrei Tarkovsky, the master of solitude, once gave this advice to the young: “Desire to be together in order to not feel alone is an unfortunate symptom, in my opinion. Every person needs to learn from childhood how to be spend time with oneself. That doesn’t mean he should be lonely, but that he shouldn’t grow bored with himself because people who grow bored in their own company seem to me in danger, from a self-esteem point of view.”
I wonder how this true this is today, let’s make an amendment: spend some time alone, and without your phone.
✌️ It’s a beautiful day. Enjoy it, and keep the Hoping Machine running.
Love,
Luke
